Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - LAWYER ARRESTED for EXPOSING the CORRUPT FOOD INDUSTRY

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

LAWYER ARRESTED for EXPOSING the CORRUPT FOOD INDUSTRY

So I walked into a slaughterhouse and tried to save a baby lamb in 2007. I've been sued and criminally charged in well over a dozen cases. You can have up to 2% or 3% other types of meat in it, which is like if a mouse fell in or something like that when they're chewing it up. And it's like, ah, they're going to get in there. It's like, ugh. The reality is there have been numerous sets posies showing that you have animals were sick, disease, you know, something contaminated with feces, with rat carcasses.

your point of view didn't get you arrested what what got you arrested what what happened there where were you born how did you get into this you know were your parents lawyers or whatever leads you down this path or was this something one day that you just decided hey this is this is the hill i'm going to die on yeah oh god um yeah i was born in central Indiana and a extremely conservative, extremely white county. And my parents were part of one of the first ways of Chinese immigration after the Immigration and Nationalization Act was passed in 1965, which finally abolished racial quotas on immigration. So they came in the early 1970s, I think, 1971. So it was just within five, six years of racial quotas being abolished

as a result in the civil rights movement, they took advantage and came to this country. And Central Indiana was not the most welcoming place for immigrants in China. That's not true. I won't sit here. Not because the people are bad for the record. I mean, I thought they're really good people.

I think human beings naturally are a little afraid of change and a little afraid of things that are different. And 100% the vast majority of people overcome this. when they actually get familiar with change and get to know people are a little different, they realize, oh, you know, you're gay, but it's not that threatening. You're just gay. Who cares? You're actually an awesome person. That actually happened to me. I mean, I grew up in a very homophobic part of the country. And then when I went to college, I met the first gay man who crossed the hall from me in college. And he was a great guy. And I just thought, wait, why,

why should I dislike you? You're just cool. I mean, I got no problems with you. And, you know, but in the early 1980s, there hadn't been much exposure to immigrants and Chinese people and places like Central Indiana. So it was a pretty hard life. But the one friend I had in the neighborhood, you know, all the kids made fun of me. Because, I mean, there were a lot of reasons to dislike me. I was a fat kid, a nerd, you know, all sorts of reasons to dislike me. But the one kid who loved me a lot. I was going to say those are the guys that are ruling the running the country now.

It's the same guy as that when I grew up, everybody picked on that, now we're like, you know, now they're running, now they're all billionaires and going to Mars and, you know, we're running Amazon. You're like, wow. There's a lot of truth to that. And I think it's, it's not even just that they, I think that it's almost causally related that when you're picked on a lot, you're just less afraid of failure and risk. Because I got, I mean, this is kind of dark, but the first time I thought about killing

myself, I think was in first grade. I used to dream about basically I'd go into the bathroom, open up the, you know, the little covered with all the industrial chemicals, like, and just think about, I mean, which one of these could kill me because it was, I mean, it was particularly bad because I think it was within the first couple weeks or first grade, I got glasses. I still have terrible, extremely thick glasses. And back then, you know, our family was pretty poor. So we got the cheapest plastic, ultra thick glasses from my vision, which was already. of terrible in first grade. And I kid you not, I think it was the first week of first grade. I broke my glasses and they had to be taped up. And I don't know if this is still a thing, but when I was growing up, having taped up glasses was like the most, I'm being four eyes was already bad enough. But then having taped up plastic glasses with lenses that are this thick, you know,

like this thick when you're in first grade, it's awful. But there's one kid in the neighborhood who loved me and that was a dog. Like my neighbor's dog just fucking loved me. And I said kid because I really do see dogs especially as their kids. I mean, they're literally like baby wolves who we have genetically engineered through 10,000 years of selective breeding to be puppies their entire lives. An adult dog is like a puppy as a wolf. And I just love dogs. But then I had a pretty traumatic experience when we went back to China for the first time because I was born and a road tier.

And I'm in America. But my family went back to China and around 1989. And for the first time my life, I realized something deeply was wrong was happening to animals because I saw dogs being killed for meat. And it messed me up a little bit as a kid. I had lots of nightmares and sent me down the path I'm on today. Okay. And when did this start? Like you went to college or you just, you like you're saying sent you down the path.

But at what point did you say, hey, this is something I'm going to pursue. And this isn't a full-time job, right? Like, you've got a regular job. Like, at this point, it's not just a full-time job. It's like five full-time jobs because I've been sued and criminally charged in well over a dozen cases over the last five years. And even just kind of keeping myself afloat. I mean, they've taken all my money away. I was recently incarcerated.

So I just got her to jail. And I've still got all these active cases against me. Honestly, that first experience where I saw for the first time that there's something wrong with the relationship to animals, because it didn't matter what anyone told me, what any authority figure told me, when my dad told me, because my dad, when we saw these dogs outside of a restaurant, they were getting prepared for slaughter, you know, I said, hey, dad, we got to save these dogs. This is wrong. And he said, well, this is just what they're taught here. And it was the first time I recognize a lot of the authority figures are teaching us are wrong. And, you know, I was very well-behaved kid. I'd never occurred. me to break any rules and but there was no one who could convince me that a rule that said it is okay to slaughter a dog was okay and that experience really shook me up and I had nightmares for years I mean decade later I still had nightmares about that experience as a kid um but it didn't occur to me that one could be an activist for animals until what almost 20 years later um in the late mid to late 2000s.

I went vegan in 1999, failed at it for about two years, and then finally when my first dog died in 2001, I committed to it 100%. But even then, I was primarily just a lawyer. I was a law professor for a short period of time at Northwestern. But it wasn't until I was at another low point in my life, basically failing as a law professor,

unable to get a tenant track job, which was my only dream. My entire childhood was my professional. dream was I want to be a law professor. I said, you know, F it, I'm sucking at everything I'm doing in life. I might as well do something that I think is good for the world. And so I walked in a slaughterhouse and tried to save a baby lamb in 2007. It's one of the last remaining slaughterhouses for mammals in the city of Chicago, which used to be the slaughterhouse capital of the nation. But Chicago is pretty representative of how animal abuse is hidden from all of us, because what used

to be the slaughterhouse capital of the world has disappeared. You know, all the stockyards and factory farms and abattoirs have been moved out to the countryside far away from where most people live. But that experience of walking in the slaughterhouse taught me two things. One is everything I had read about slaughterhouse is real. These are awful, filthy, dangerous places. And there's something very primitive about fear among mammals. And I mean, probably a lot of people in your audience in several experiences. When you see another animal, and it doesn't have to be a human being who's afraid, you start feeling afraid, too, because you know there's danger. And when you walk in a slut off for the first time, if you're attuned to your own feelings,

the most immediate emotional response you have, because you see all these animals who are huddling, and they know, they hear the streams of other animals, they can smell the blood, and they know they're about to die. And you can feel it too. You're like, whoa. And it's weird because I didn't feel that threat. There was nobody there. It was a middle of the night. I knew I was alone, but you just feel this fear. And it was pretty powerful and just made me think, damn, everything I thought I knew about slaughterhouses and factory farms, it's even worse because when you have the full sensor experience,

not just seeing and hearing on some video, but you're smelling, you know, the blood and the feces and the chemicals. You can even physically feel like there's this film on your skin and your hair afterwards because there's so much like soot and the feces and chemicals, like you can feel under your skin or your hair when you walk out of a slaughterhouse afterwards, which is why some of these slot house workers develop all sorts of terrible health conditions

because they're constantly in that film of death and stress and chemicals. Because there are a lot of crazy chemicals they use in slaughterhouse production. But probably the most important thing about that entire experience wasn't just that I could experience just myself and vivid three-dimensional reality, but it was really easy. I realized damn I can just walk into these places because they're even a very small slaughterhouse they don't have much labor I mean it's all very industrialized they have basically no security

because it's too expensive and they're trying to keep the meat as cheap as possible so I just walked in and I realized hey if I didn't actually successfully rescuing an animal that day because it turns out a little baby lamb is a 120 pound animal and they're very scared of you and it's going to be impossible to carry them out. I tried, but I failed. But I realized it would be pretty easy to do this. I could document this very, very easily and show the world exactly what I'm seeing. And so that's why I started doing in 2007. So you went in there. You didn't get an animal. You didn't get one. No. They ran away from you. Um, so what at what point did you think like this is I'm going to do this? And how do you survive doing this? Like, I mean, do you have a Patreon account?

like do you have a you know like people is there do you start a foundation and you know what is that process like did you talk to your but one of your buddies and say this is what I want to do and they said oh well here's how to you set it up I mean I understand you're an attorney but yep this is a little bit rare it's yeah I'd say it's a little rare so it's like how do I make this a whole time job yeah through law school and um right up to the point that I started at Northwestern I was actually teaching the L-SAT and it was very good living, you know, I was lucky enough to get a scholarship in law school so I didn't have to pay tuition and I was, you know, basically going to law school for free. And then I was making, considerable in my money, I was making like $40 an hour teaching the L-Sat for 10 to 20 hours a week all the way through law school. So I actually built up a pretty good savings account by the time I was done at law school.

And then Northwestern paid pretty well too. Law professors are not paid as well as lawyers. They're paid pretty well by academics. So that year, and I've always had super low expenses, and I slept on couches and closets. I've lived in some of the jurors conditions, at least by modern American standards. Like right now I sleep on my residence is a living room floor, which I share with one of the person. There are two people sleeping on a living room floor, and then it's a one bedroom, tiny one bedroom farm in San Francisco.

So when you have very low expenses, you can get away doing things like the voting or like to invest in the fact of the slaughterhouses. But no, for the first, I'd say, 10 or so years that I was doing investigations, it was all so fun. And I did run out in money. So in 2007, I left Northwestern and started doing this sort of work. And then by about 2009, after two years, I just ran out of money. So I did actually, I worked in Big Wall. I went from, and they had no idea that, you know, my moonlighting was sticking around with back reforms.

But I did securities litigation in 2009. after the financial crisis and worked in that area for about five years from 2009 to 2014, 2015. And at night, what are you doing? Well, I mean, when I was working at Big Wall, I did much less of it for sure. Right. There was a brief moment where I actually thought, maybe I will stay in Big Law because I, I hate to admit this, but I kind of like the job in some ways, partly because you can probably tell. I am the sort of person who likes intense experiences in big law litigation is a pretty intense experience.

And, you know, for example, there was a month I remember where I worked every single day, basically from 8 a.m. to midnight every day, including weekends. And I had a lot of fun. I was like, wow, this is really fun. This is intense. And so that was, it was a good fit for me in some ways. But I went to sleep and I knew I don't feel good going to sleep knowing. I mean, for the most part, I didn't feel that bad about the cases because we were primarily a defense firm,

but we're defending ourselves from other big institutions like hedge funds and a bank. And it's like, I don't care about the other side of this case. I also don't care that much about our client, but I don't care about the other side. And if I take money from some head fund, who cares, you know? But I still felt like, I mean, what's the point of living if you're not doing stuff that you find actually meaningful? And I didn't find my life meaningful. So as much time as I could find, I was continuing to investigate research,

encourage other people to investigate and research factory farms, laboratories, and other animal music facilities. I mean, investigate and research, but once they say, hey, these are horrible places. Yeah.

You're right. Then what? Like, where does it go from them? So this is, this is one of the biggest conundrums in the law, right?

And I know you, you documented through your podcast, some failures in our legal system. And one failure. Right. Yeah, there's a couple. There's a couple. that you've documented here or there.

But one of the biggest failures that most people don't recognize. And I think, you know, the fundamental failure of a legal system is it bends to power. If you have a lot of power, the legal system favors you. If you don't have power, the legal system will fuck you. Right. It was totally destroyed. And there's some exceptions that.

Occasionally a powerful person has held to account. But what is even more blatant than the distortion to the legal system from powerful people is powerful systems. And big ag, is one of the most powerful systems in American history, corrupting the kind of application of the wall

to circumstances that mattered to all of us. How do they do this? They have a, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I'll give you kind of an explanation. That's a great question, and I'll explain it, but I'll also give a concrete example. And the explanation is it's partly money. It is absolutely money.

There's enormous amount of money in Big Ag, and they've always made huge contributions to various elected officials. Agriculture was the original industry of the United States. This is a nation of farmers. Almost all the founding fathers were farmers. You know, at the 20th century in the early 1900s, one and two Americans lived on a farm. All right.

One and two. Now it's less than one percent. I'm guessing you don't live on a farm? No, no. But I do know anyone who lives on a farm? Um, I know several people that work in the, in the, um, farm industry, which would be, uh, the, um, basically like the milk industry. Like they, they, they, they're cattle farms and they, um, but they probably don't live on the farm. Actually, my wife was raised on a on really here. So here's what happens. And, and I'm sure this is everywhere. I, I, I, but I only know Florida. So in Florida, they have these, you know, they're, they're dairies. And they'll have. And they'll have. And they'll have. I mean an outrageous amount I could have 15,000 cows yeah and my wife's father is a a breeder so he's always worked on farms all I think that's all he's ever done his two brothers work on farms breeders my wife has worked on at the same farms as my dad I mean as her father her mother for a long period of time worked there until they get they separated they met because her mother. was a milker my wife's sister is take basically she's not a breeder she she she she

forget her name but she's like a nurse like like when the abs are born they take them away from the moms and they separate them and and if they get sick or something they have to kind of you know to care sure right so she does that i don't know what her actual title is but she does that full-time and what happens is the bulk of the industry in florida which i'm assuming is pretty much everywhere is made up by like Mexicans or immigrants, at the very least, some kind of South American immigrants. And so let's say 90% of them are, you know, migrant workers or whatever. So they come in, you know, they pay them very little. You know what's also funny about that? They don't get overtime. Wow. So you can have them work 80 hours a week and you pay in the same shitty $11 or

$12 an hour. And but they also, they're, you know, A lot of them don't have, have, um, driver's licenses, right. They don't have papers. They don't have drivers licenses. They have, they have issues. And a lot of them, they, they, they make enough money. Then they, then they drink it away, you know, so they can't pay their bill. So here's what they kind of figured out was, you know what?

We can have them live on the farm. We can build really cheap houses and have them stay in dairy houses. So my wife was raised until the age of, I don't know if it's nine or 10 or something like that on. a dairy wow and her brothers were even longer because you know they were like 12 13 14 14 years old and her father's her father's to this day lives in a dairy house is your wife an immigrant no it was just funny because talk about being in a minority and they're like the only white people on this her sister speaks fluent spanish my my wife said her her spanish is better than her english she's married to a mexican sure because she rate she was raised around a bunch

A bunch of Mexicans. Yeah, of all our kids. That's, that's a labor force of agriculture today. You're right. It's all my rights. Right. And it's funny, too, because, you know, when we first met, I mean, she doesn't work there now. Now she's a marine mechanic.

But, you know, I would call her or she would call me and I'd say, what are you doing? She's like, nothing. And I go, what do you work? She go, yeah. I go, what's going on? She's, I've been here for like four hours. They're not doing anything. She's like, the machines broke.

I said, why don't they send everybody home? She goes, they don't have, they can't send them home. As soon as it, you know, we have to produce this much milk today. Yeah. Milk's waiting. We can't leave it there. They have to fix the machines or the pumps or whatever. So we wait.

And I was like, well, do you get overtime? She's like, no, we just sit here. So here for 12 hours and do nothing. And, you know, it's so, you know, and it, like you said, it's, it's, it sucks. You should see these houses. They're not great. They're horrible. They're all on dirt roads.

Yep. It's, you know, it's a miserable kind of existence. but probably better than living somewhere in south america yeah yeah i don't think that's a right it's a trade off yeah so i mean yeah and you're right the the the conditions are often deplorable for the workers themselves and that's a circumstance where it might be better but there have been circumstances including a factory fire one hold on we're talking about you we were just talking about you what is your sister's job the the um we should take here the the little baby calves what they call it they don't call anything

She was, I don't know. She's a farmer. Okay, I thought it had a special. Her dad is a breeder. She always said he's a breeder. I thought there had a special name. Sorry, my fault. Yeah.

Takes care of the baby cows. That's what she said. Yeah. Interesting. So sorry. No, no. I mean, just, yeah, I was talking about the political influence of the industry, but it's funny.

You say 15,000 cows. My guess there's a lot of people like, whoa, 15,000 cows. And it's like, that's pretty standard, if not small. Oh, yeah. This has changed. a hundred years ago if there was a facility of 15,000 cows honestly that would sound like some sort of

fantasy to people like there were no herds there were no dairy industry facilities in 1900 in the United States 15,000 cows it's like come on what is this some sort of fable like that's that sounds like it's impossible

just because it can't be not but industrialization of agriculture I mean you would mention a machine that broke down oh yeah this this is a very mechanized process now it is. So this is not. I've been there.

Listen, I've been, her dad works in another place now, but I've been to both places. And, you know, when they heard the cows through, you know,

they've got a whole series of, you know, and they move them and it pushes them and moves them and they give them shot. It's an assembly line. Yeah, they pump them full of chemicals to keep them, you know,

yeah, I mean, her dad does, which incidentally, there's a lot of evidence that's bad kids, which is why a lot of people are buying organic milk now. Right, because of all the hormones and milk.

my wife has proof of that yeah i'm joking i'm just joking i'm just joking i'm just i know people have actually been affected negatively so and it's not their fault you know like right if you've had some sort of developmental disorder because of all the hormones but these animals are our evolutionary or kin so the growth hormones that they often pump the cows up with can affect us in very negative way yeah yeah of course you know look at listen we were talking to somebody the the day about people in vietnam and Cambodia and we were like listen you look at you look at a 20-year-old here 20-year-old kid girl here and you look like a 20-year-old in cambodia they look like 12-year-olds you know like the the women here are just it's you know it's just saying it's going a lot faster

yeah it's it's it's like there's the same age and it's like you would think there's 10 years between the two of them like as quickly we're developing and Um, you know, and that's got to be, and I'm sure there's many studies that have something to do with. There's steroids that are pumped into them and the drugs and everything else and chemicals that. So yeah, I mean, I'm sure. And you know, they do it, you know, they obviously they want to keep the animals healthy and producing milk. But then again, you go the same thing when you, we, we watched this, uh, my wife and I watched this thing on, um, chickens the other day. On the chicken industry or dairy industry. What's, what do they call it? Poultry. Sorry, poultry industry. Horrible, bro. Not horrible.

Even when they say free, like it was the first time I, you know, I would think free ranges, free ranges. That's awesome. These are, these little birds are running around in the hills or, you know, in the, it's just they got, now they got three feet by three feet or two feet by two feet, free range. Yep, two feet. And sometimes they don't even get to use it. You know, I just have a little window. They say, like in theory, the chickens couldn't go out. So you got a shed with, you know, 28,000 chickens.

And then you have a three feet by three feet, little patio where. the enclosure opens up and they don't even open the door, let them out. And they still market it as re-ranking. Oh, and they're fully grown in like six weeks. Fully grown. They're breaking their legs. And they're, it's, yeah, it's horrific. Yeah, anywhere from one to five to sometimes as many as one and three chickens can't even walk.

By the time they're reaching slaughterhouse, they're having mobility issues. And those diseases that are causing these chickens to be debilitated, that's not good for us either. You know, no, for me, the primary reason to avoid these things is because of the suffering of animals. I see no difference between your chicken and a dog. And I wouldn't want to see a dog hobbling around and kill because someone wanted to eat her. But even if you don't give a damn about the chicken for her own sake, I mean, you should be concerned because most of what we eat is kind of sick, debilitated animals. And that's not good for us. And one of the reasons they're able to get away with this is, though, because of the enormous amount of money and the historical

importance. And that, that's kind of the second reason there's so much corruption and lack of enforcement, even of consumer protection standards, you know, one of the reasons that free-range chicken farm, for example, can continue to mark itself as free range is because there's a law in the books called the Holtry Products Inspection Act. This is a law that was originally passed along with the Meat Products Inspection Act in the early 1900s after Upton Sinclair, who was one of the most famous journalists and writers in American history, wrote this book called The Jungle in 1904, I think it was. It might have been 1905, somewhere around that. And he did field work in the Chicago stockyards.

He just, like, walked around in Chicago, looking at all the animals and all the animals being slaughtered, and was horrified. It was horrified. Because this is just like the beginnings of the industrialization of agriculture. And so you're seeing all the chemicals. You're seeing the assembly lines starting to develop. And up in St. Clair is like, holy shit.

Holy shit. You're seeing people with their arms decapitated. You're seeing like tumors gross going into the meat, like rats and mice and you have in your ground beef. this is like chaos this is chaos and he writes his book and the entire country is upset about and saying what the hell i thought we're eating meat this isn't even me this is like a mouse's head or you know and you don't know because it's all ground up or it's like a tumorous cancer's growth this isn't meat this is literally you know vermin this is vermin and filth that we're being fed

and as a result the federal government passed a law called a meat products inspection which sounds great. And one of the primary planks of this law was consumer protection. There was this provision in the Meat Products Inspection Act that said misbranding, falsely advertising her products is illegal. And one of the most magical and devastating tricks the industry is used over the last, really, I'd say a few hundred years, but certainly starting with the Meat Products Inspection Act, is taking the very laws that are supposed to protect consumers and using those same laws to shield the industry from accountability because what's happened to the meat products inspection act the mpia gives exclusive authority across the entire nation to regularly misbranding to the u.s department of

agriculture so if you as a state government or a county government so say in the state of california this is a little example that happened california about 15 years ago tried to pass a law saying hey we don't really like the idea of down cows and the up in the meets of life right a down cow is a cow we can't walk because they could have mount cow disease they could have you know some sort of virus they could have bacteria i mean who knows what they have but you know a cowling is so sick that you can't even walk let's not eat her now let's not slaughter her so let's try to get this out of the system in this law the california tried to pass to protect consumers in california was struck down by federal court on the grounds that nope sorry the only agency in the entire nation

that's allowed to regulate slaughter houses is the u sda and you as a state government you as a county government cannot interfere. And what happened to the USDA almost immediately after the Meat Products Inspection Act was passed, it was co-opted by the industry. The industry immediately infiltrated it. Even today, 100 years later, if you look at the Secretary of Agriculture, all the high reps in the industry, it's a revolving door of industry executives. Tom Vilsack is the current Secretary of Agriculture.

He was making a cool million or two every year as the head of the U.S. dairy export counsel right before he became the Secretary of Agriculture for basically doing no work. It was like one of those gang jobs where they just pay you for nothing. He sat around doing nothing. They paid him like a cool million because they knew was politically powerful and they needed to get him back into a position of power. So he would be the one regulating the slot offices and factory farms. And that's exactly where he is today.

And that's why all these laws that are intended to protect animals and consumers just aren't enforced. They really aren't. But the concrete example I want to give you, because obviously I'm going to say, This guy is a crazy vegan. Of course, he's going to say stuff like that. Who knows what's actually happening. Pat Pesu, who is a former, for many years, was the chief veterinarian of the food safety and special service.

So this is the guy who's response for overseeing all the 10 billion farm animals across the country, ensuring there are no infections or diseases that are reaching human consumers, right? This is his job. He was the chief of error. He was at the top. Right. I've gotten a known over the last couple of years. And he became a whistleblower.

He left the USDA on good terms. Like, he was a solid bureaucrat. But after he left, he had so much guilt about what happened that he's come out and now said, the reality is there is basically no one willing to stand up to big pork and big ag, not in the U.S. government. And so, for example, when there was an outbreak in, I think it was Washington State, the New York Times covered this in this article about tainted pork. There's an outbreak, if I believe is an E. coli that was making a lot of kids

sick when the USDA and even the CDC said hey this seems like a problem all these kids are sick they're going to mears you know almost surely some kids are dying from this shouldn't we figure out what farm it came from like that's kind of what we do contact tracing right I mean that's kind of the obvious thing you do epidemiologically when there's a disease you got to figure out where it came right and so all they did was they they went to the federal government in the USDA and said hey you guys you know under the meat products of spectrum you have the exclusive authority is it okay if you use this authority so we can at least go and test and figure out where this disease came from and big pork and the USDA vetoed it so we never found out where that

bug came from and again it's there's an article by Matt Rick tell in the New York Times about this and this is the sort of story that Pappasu told me and said this is a sham this system is not protecting consumers it's protecting extremely powerful corporations who have an interest in minimizing the amount of negative exposure so people keep eating meat and keep eating cheap meat that it's filled with antibiotics and hormones and don't realize that this isn't just torturing animals that's potentially killing human beings. So who's appointing these people to the food and drug? Is it the food?

What did you say? The USDA. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. And to the U.S. And Trump. And it's bipartisan corruption because Tom Vilsack is a hack for the industry, but so is Sonny Purdue, the former Secretary of Agriculture.

So it's like it's like the Federal Reserve where they go and they give the president 10 names all of which they're okay with and he picks one so it seems like it seems so that they can say well a president appointed this person well you gave me 10 names to pick from you know what I'm saying

like people think that oh it's he appointed him it's not really how it works they're like we're good It's not how it works at all yeah it's how it works at all and you know part of the reason in presidential politics especially it's really hard to disentangle

our democracy from corporate corruption is that Iowa is the first caucus in the nation and Iowa is one of the biggest farm states and everyone on the left and the right feels like they have to bow down to the industry and every presidential candidate there are some policies

that everyone who's looked at the policy agrees that it's just stupid it's literally just straight out corporate bribery and just giving money away like ethanol ethanol subsidies are widely understood for corn like there's a document about big corn and there's just there's no one who's

policy on this I think this makes any sense at all basically giving money away to primarily it's a subsidized factory farming because when you get feed costs like corn costs and soy costs super low the main beneficiary of that because most of the most of the crops in this country are fed to farm out so not fed the game in games because farm animals will eat a huge amount of cord and soy and all sorts of things and alfalfa yeah and everybody everybody on the left and the right whether it's a heritage foundation the cato institute the brookings institute Everyone who's a policy that I've said, this is a totally steered policy that's just like giving away taxpayer money to billionaires. You know, why are we doing this?

And yet even Elizabeth Warren, you know, even people Bernie Sanders, like people I otherwise would love to support. When they go into Iowa, they all bow down to the industry and say, yes, we will give you in your millionaires and your billionaires, taxpayer money. It's completely ludicrous. so I mean what is so what do you think this well I was saying it first I keep thinking about I had heard a statistic one you would know like isn't it like with with meat and stuff like there's a certain amount or is it or is it like orange juice or something I forget what it was something I heard one time like there's a certain percentage that they're okay with like it can be like like you know insects and bugs like there's a certain percentage of meat that yes it has allowable like you can have up to 2% or 3% other types of meat in it, which is like if a mouse fell in or something like that when they're chewing it up. And it's like, ah, they're going to get in there. It's like, ugh. Yeah. So in theory, under the Meat Products Inspection Act, adulterated animal products are prohibited. And adulterated means diseased, you know, something contaminated with feces or

rat carcasses or whatever. In practice, the reality is there have been numerous sex poses showing that you have animals who are sick, you have animals who are already dead, and so we don't know exactly how they die, why they're ending up to the needs a fly. Again, the down cow problem, right? You wouldn't think it would be that controversial to say, hey, if this animal is so sick they can't even walk, maybe we should not be killing them to eat them. Animals are contaminant of chemicals. They're very, sorts or hormones, antibiotics. You know, there's an antibiotic called carbidox that the FDA has acknowledged is a carcinogen at all levels. There's no safe level of carbidox that leads the cancer, it's a

carcinogen. So it banned pretty much everyone in the world, except the United States because of a big pork. And Smithfield, the largest pork production company in the world that has relentlessly tried to put me in prison for the last, you know, seven or so years. They continue to feed carbidocks to all their piglets. And so the theory and the practice are very different. In theory, at least with the perspective of meat products, it should be the case that none of the adulterated products should be sold to consumer. In practice, given the absolute absence of any sort of enforcement, there's a lot of adulterated animal products that end up in the food supply. And one of the dangerous things is if there's some bacteria or fungus or even virus that

attacks a soybean, the odds that that virus is going to be able to fit. affect us are very low because you are not a soybean. I am not a soy kid. Right. On the other hand, you are a mammal. I am a mammal. And swine flu is a real thing that affects not just you, but me. E. coli is a real thing that affects not just you, but me. Salmonella is a thing that affects not just chickens, but human beings. And so if you have an adulterated plant-based food product, that's terrible and it shouldn't happen. But the odds that's that that's going to kill you are very low. You've got an adulterated animal product. I mean,

Solanella alone, the CDC has done research showing that there's something like 115,000, 180,000 Americans who get sick from salmonella from egg products alone. Six figures. You know, we were concerned about the hundred thousand, a couple hundred thousand people who died from COVID, rightfully so in my view. But there are literally over 100,000 people getting sick from salmonella from eggs because these filthy factory plants. And the USDA does almost nothing. And when the CDC tries to say, you know, it's not so good that people are getting sick. The factory farming industry is so powerful, they're not even allowed to do testing to figure out where it came from.

So what's the, what's the solution to that problem other than breaking, other than breaking and freeing animals? Well, I think, honestly, and this might seem like, this might seem like a leap for people until they understand the importance of direct action historically. I do think the solution is partly people breaking into these places and exposing what's happening because the government isn't willing to be a good watchdog. If the industry isn't going to be a good watchdog for itself, somebody has to be the watchdog. And that means ordinary citizens.

Well, I was going to say, what about, like, what about going into the, instead of letting these be presidential appointed positions, you know, having them somebody, somebody else, you know, from a, from a legislative standpoint. point, you know, other than invoking a January 6th incident here. Other than that, let's go with legislation at this one. We're not appointing, you know, some guy who donated a lot to your campaign. For sure. That is a great idea that cannot be achieved without transparency.

Right. Because the public doesn't even know there's a problem. 75% of Americans today, when you ask them, even after 20 years of exposés and factory farms and a lot of houses, still believe the animal products, personally consumed come from places that are well maintained the animal standards are high the animals are well treated 75% of americans 99% of animal products come from factory farms that when people see the conditions they're so horrible people turn away they literally don't even want to look at the slaughterhouse at factory farm

so there's they will stop at McDonald's on the way home and get and get chicken McNuggets exactly and it's it's because 75% Americans legitimately think that it's probably okay they think the government's doing their job They think the industry is self-regulated. And it's not. So the first step is we need transparency even to start a conversation on the subject. And as long as the industry is covering things up, and it's not just the industry covering things up.

Have you heard of the ag-gag laws that have been passed a procrastination? I don't know. It sounds familiar, but I have a horrible memory. So ag-gag laws are laws that make it a crime to document inside of an animal enterprise, a laboratory, a fur farm, or a factory farm. And you might think, how is that possible? I thought we had a first amendment, and we do. And these laws have been challenged in court, and they've been struck down repeatedly

across the country. But it hasn't stopped the industry from passing them, and it hasn't stopped people from being prosecuted. And one of the reasons we started doing what we do, which is just going into factory farms in the middle of the night, without any consent, without even pretending to be employees, without using any sort of manipulation to try and get access consensually, is because Because all the methods that activists used to use and advocacy groups used to use to expose factory farms, suddenly became illegal because of the agag laws in Utah, Iowa, North Carolina, all the states where we've done these investigations that have led me to be charged in jail have these agag laws. And while they're unconstitutional, sometimes it can take five years to litigate that and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to the point that laws is actually, you know, ultimately vacated by federal court.

it's still a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of huge amount of money right you know as you know you've been in world legal system you know how much it's it's it's such a difficult thing to litigate and you know the reality is the animal movement and consumers I mean each individual consumer you know they have an interest in this but it's not like any individual consumers can fund a multi-million dollar lawsuit to ensure there's transparency and a fact that's a lot of money well even in the even in the end it's like does that change it because I see people with these hit and cameras on going into, you know, and they'll show like, you know, they'll show like different industries. They'll show the chickens and the, you know, and the, uh, the cows and, you know, the horrific things that are happening. And, um, but in the, and I've, you know, watched the, I've watched the documentaries. Yeah. But, you know, I still had a, a TV dinner with, with, you know, chicken in it today. So I mean, so what I'm saying is like, you know, I don't know that, I don't know how you get that. Because. Every time you see one of these, you're horrified for a couple hours, maybe a day or two.

Maybe you talk to you about, you tell your friends about it for two days, but you still end up going out and getting, you know, getting a stake at, you know, on your anniversary or whatever. So it's like how do you. So to me, I don't see that, you know, it's out of sight, out of mind. I don't see like suddenly people just stop eating meat. I think that you, that probably legislation of some kind. Or, you know, like you said, transparency, which would probably lead to legislation. Yep. Yeah, I think you're pointing to the fundamental problem, which is that every human being individually is quite busy. You've got a lot in your mind. And whether it's an environment, worker abuses, you know, like probably some of the migrant workers, your wife worked with, animal cruelty issues, you just don't have time.

especially in today's world where people aren't there's so much stress like the statistic is and it's and you know and they're struggling with you know and let's face it you know food is pretty cheap even though it's getting more expensive it is cheap and for you to go like you said like you're vegan like you know that that can be expensive and difficult where you eat and it causes all kinds of problems for you like where do we go eat where do I you have yes I was it prepared here here's the fundamental problem that for a long time not just advocates, but even the industry itself. And this is very true of climate change when you read,

like it's the book by Michael Mann called The New Climate War, about fossil fuels. For a long time, these big industries have tried to wrest responsibility for all these abuses on individual concerns. So, for example, you got the chevrons of the world saying, you know, we'd love to do something about climate change, but people just love their SUVs. There's nothing to be done.

And similarly, McDonald says, we'd love to do something on animal cruelty, but people love their chicken nuggets. What are we supposed to do? I mean, they want chicken nuggets. And what that misses is that the problem is systemic in origin. Like each of us individually, if we had a choice, if I could give you a choice between having a delicious form of meat

that involved no cruelty in any animal, no violence, any animal, in a delicious form of meat that involved cruelty animal. 100% or almost 100%. There's a small percentage psychopath who'd say, like, yeah, let's go ahead and torture the air. But 100% of people are going to say, like, no, I want the meat that doesn't involve cruelty. Yeah. But you're not given that choice. Well, even if you did that, you probably could at this point, but that meat would be a lot more.

You'd have to make it as the same cost. I agree. And I'll tell you what the solution is, plant-based and alternative meats. I really think this is the future. I think that if you look at kind of just the resource costs, there are countries and cultures through human history that have had plant-based meats. Meat doesn't mean from animal. Meat is just a protein-based substance. Tofu can be a meat.

Satan can be a meat. you know beyond burgers are a form of meat it's literally beyond meat there there are delicious sustainable in more ecologically and economically efficient forms of forming protein that civilizations in india and china have used for thousands of years my ancestors in china for example ate tons of meat and it just wasn't based on animals right and just even if you look at the thermodynamics the most efficient form of meat is chicken right and do you know how many calories of edible protein we're using to produce one chicken? In other words, the input-output ratio, how many calories of human edible protein is going into producing the chicken

to get one protein of chicken calories out? I have no idea. It's about 8 or 9-1, which means we're throwing away like 80%, 90% of the value. So if we shifted our food system towards plant-based proteins, and again, I'm sure a lot of people in this audience are thinking, oh my God, I don't eat the Beyond Burger. The reality is it's a relatively minor cultural ship. And if we actually invested, there are tens of billions of dollars in government subsidies that have gone into designing, genetically engineering, selectively bringing animals. There's literally a meat institute that the federal government funds in Nebraska,

where they just experiment on producing meat of various types, making it cheaper, making more delicious. If we use those same subsidies for meat, not based on animals, and that could be cell cultures, It could be plant-based alternatives. It could be all sorts of things. It could be just making better beans. You know, people love beans. So whatever it is. So we can have a meat-based system that involve no animals all.

And I think that is the future. So I'm getting, I have a wife. She's sitting on the couch and she's raising her hand for about the last five minutes. So, and I think I'm, I think she'll correct me. I think, because we were watching this the other day where there's like a machine and what was it in in 3d printed meat have you heard this i mean of course you yeah i know people work on these sorts of things super interesting right like we're looking at we're like this looks amazing like this and it's just an enzyme right isn't an enzyme or something to sell culture yeah yeah where they actually

grow it and and um so that i thought was super in that too is that with the okay that was good i yeah absolutely the the other thing i was going to mention is and this is funny this isn't has nothing to with meat. But I read an article, God, this was 10 years ago. I was in prison when I read this. And it was in like popular science or something. And it talked about how governments, how farms are subsidized by the government. And there were, basically they were taking shipping containers and they could put them in a, in a vacant lot in the middle of New York City and stack them stack them on top of each other or go into a warehouse and they could create these farms right in the middle of the city that were producing you know they were taking like one acre of

a far or one or two acre facility in the city that would produce the same as 40 or 60 acres out in the middle of you know wherever they're growing you know Idaho or something and they were they were explaining that it took 80% less water it took no there were no chemicals involved because it's inside there's no there's no musky there's no bugs you don't have to do anything to kill off all the pests yeah right it that they grow they grow like they were growing like they were getting instead of like three harvests a year or something they were getting like 12 harvest a year because they're growing 24 hours a day they just have UV lights so the whole thing when the guy broke it all down they were like but this is this is amazing they're

like why aren't these everywhere and they said we're basically at almost the same dollar oh you also don't have to ship them you don't have in shipping you lose 20% of the product so they were explained like no no we've got a hundred percent but we're delivering 100% of what we're growing you know doesn't cost gas doesn't cost all these things they go through the whole thing they were like well and he said we're almost able to compete with farms they will they said well you would think based on what you're saying you'd be really able to compete You'd be much, much cheaper.

And they said, well, we really, technically we are, but we're not subsidized. Subsidized. Exactly. We're not subsidized. So as a result, and, and think about how amazing that is. Like, now I don't have to have my stuff shift over the course of five or 10 days. I don't have to do any of those things. You can have all your food grown two miles away in a warehouse and delivered to publics.

So that's a supermarket chain in Florida. So delivered to the supermarket. And it's delivered like the day after. a few hours after it's picked and it costs and it's it is produced at 80% with all of these things that we don't want in the foods and it's produced right down the road

and it doesn't cost all the different things all the amazing amazing yeah but they were saying like yeah we're trying to get legislation and they the guy that did the article said the same thing the farmer that he was talking to he said the same thing they were like why isn't this being subsidized or what and he said yeah well the industry the farm industry is just massive and it's just too big and they're they're we're crushing us if and it's really

the farm bill the farm bill the farm bill yeah so a lot of people don't know how big the farm bill is and the way I describe it is the farm bill is a war on animals in the environment because it it literally is nearly as much as our military spending and a lot of people are concerned about the military industrial complex and how much money we use a war is certainly you know the war in Iraq It was, I think, by all accounts, a completely waste of money and just, not just a waste of money, but a catastrophe for the people who died. The farm bill is a war on the environment of animals. It comes to the tune of hundreds of billions with a beat of tax care dollars going to subsidize big industry. Right.

So one of the richest men in China, Wan Long, he owns Smithfield Foods, the largest pickbacked accommodation. He doesn't need more money. He's already billionaire. one of the richest people in the wall. He sits around in a mansion while all these pegs are being tortured. His company alone, one company, the Washington Post estimated, they received $600 million in straight-up handouts through the farm bill. They just give them $600 million. I'd love to have $600 million. I'd need it a lot more than when Long does. I'd rather you have it. I'd rather anyone happen than this guy, honestly. He's not even a U.S. citizen. He's a billionaire insuring it. And he makes

$600 million. And what is that money going to? It's going to things like factory farms, her farms, laboratories, all sorts of disgusting things that most people could not even stomach watch it. Right. And so when you ask, well, why don't we have a plant-based food system or an alternative agricultural system? We have vertical farming, sustainable farming. The big part of it is these incumbent players have a stranglehold alarm food system.

And they have so much power and influence in a politics that no one is willing to challenge them. And that's when the grass seeds comes into play. And where you use dramatic storytelling and direct action and nonviolence. Nonviolence is crucial. Everything we do is nonviolent. But when the government is asleep at the wheel, when the system is fundamentally broken, ordinary people need to take direct action. And that is the history of this country.

That is what the founding fathers in 1776, because they were part of a broken system too. And they said, enough is enough. We're going to do something different. And that's what we're trying to do. and we've had thousands of people participate, you know, and I think one of the reasons the prosecuting is so hard in trying to send me to prison for such a long period of time is because it's working, because people are interested, not just interesting, but they're actually participating in the demonstrations and the advocacy and listening to these stories

and blown away by the amount of corruption in our food system, and not just our food system, but our pharmaceutical industry, our animal testing industry, and our clothing industries, and they want change. right well so your point of view didn't get you arrested what what got you arrested what happened there um so i've been arrested many times at this point so uh and you're a lawyer like have you lost your license they're trying to i literally this morning i kid you not this morning i got an order indicating they're going to try and suspend my license on march 18 so like basically a month from today.

And they've tried many times. So far, they haven't removed my license. Do you have a hearing? Do you have to go to a hearing? Yeah, I've got to go to a hearing. Which I'm not going to be able to go to because I'm going on trial in Wisconsin.

But what has got me arrested is, is challenging both the lack of transparency and the abuse of animals by taking direct action, just by trying to help animals. And so the trial of coming up in a month involved the blind beagle puppy who was so so tormented that and lived in a cage that was just about twice a length of her own body her entire life but she was so tormented that she was just spinning in her cage over many hours of all she could do she couldn't get out she had no stimulation no companionship she was suffering from multiple maladies inside the cage no individualized attention or veterinary care and all we did was we saw

this tormented being and i can you know show you the video and photos it's just the monster believe the case that this this beagle was suffering from torment we took her to the vet that's what I did but an industry that is based on cruelty so we took her out of the cage we took her out into the dark in the middle of the night and we took it to the vet and I've now been charged with felony burglaring theft facing 16 years in prison for taking this beagle puppy to the vet yeah whoa so but for any mind asked how is this possible because and it's not just this case I mean there have been dozens of FBI agents across the country that have mobilized and try and prosecute me specifically.

There have been dozens of FBI agents who cross-state lines trying to chase down animals and rescue. It's almost like some sort of ridiculous, you know, sci-fi comedy where, like, don't they have better things to do? Yeah, don't they have better things? And one of the things to note is these dogs are rescued from this experimentation pistol or the pigs are rescued from that Smithfield factory farm owned by the billionaire in China.

In all of these cases, these animals don't even have any value because they're so sick, they're so broken that they cannot be sold anymore. At least legally, they should not be sold. So, and, you know, I'm sure you and the people in your audience have probably had something stolen from them at some point in their life, you know, like a wallet and iPhone, whatever. It was a bike. I dare you to call the FBI and try and convince not just one agent,

but dozens of agents to go across the country searching for your wallet, which clearly that wallet probably was worth a lot more than this puppy, worth a lot more than those sick piglets who are rescued from factory for them. but well I'm an example even then I even if you said hey you got your stuff stole would you like the FBI to track this guy down sure if they said hey you know if this guy gets caught he's going to get 15 or 16 years I'd be like oh yeah listen it's not that important like I'll cancel my credit cards bro I wouldn't be okay with sending someone to prison for 15 or 16 years because you know they broke in my house involving two big lids both of them are clearly dying

on the break of job and the company didn't even know we removed them because this is a company that at that one facility, one facility. We talked about 15,000 being a lot of cows. This one farm, it's not even a farm, it's a huge industrial facility, processes 1.2 million pigs every year. Circle 4 farms in southern Utah. They didn't even know we took these piglets because they got 1.22 million pigs, two sick piglets. I mean, it's not even a rounding there. It's like, it's a rounding error for rounding there.

That's how small and significant is. They didn't even know removed these animals. from this facility. And again, there's a federal terrorism investigation that starts. They accuse us of terrorism. And in trial and testimony, dozens of FBI agents involved. And we went to trial, the prosecutor was asking for five years in prison for two piglets. We did no other damage.

They didn't even know we were there until months later. And you said, you're not in jail because of your beliefs. Kind of, but kind of not, because the fundamental reason they're upset and the seal of Costco got involved in this. He was involved in our prosecution. You might wonder why. And it's because we basically got into the New York Times with a lot of critical coverage of Costco and some of the most important corporations in the nation and how they're lying to the public about giving freedom to animals. And so, you know, yeah, they asked for five years. And thankfully, we won that case. But, you know, I'll get another case coming up in less than a month, March 18th is when the trial

starts. If we lose this case, this case, I would guess the prosecution asked for at least a few years. I don't know. But the biomedical industry is extremely powerful. And they are concerned about these demonstrations and concerned about these rescues. And they went to turns. So that's where we are. Um, I'm sorry. I hate to say this. It's just, what was the charge? It's felony of burglary and felony theft because they're claiming these dogs are worth more than $25,500. Still, it would, that's just an embarrassing charge. You can't go to prison with that charge.

You can't go to prison with, with, for, you know, for breaking into a, um, uh, to an animal facility. Like, that's, it's like, that's just, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, it's like, oh my God, that's just a ridiculous charge to go into prison with people, be like, that's not true. Yeah, that was true. You would hope not. But, and again, you can look into this. I have a friend who spent five years in prison primarily for running a website against animal experimentation.

Her name is Lauren Gozola, and it was a campaign called Stop Hunting and Animal Cruelty. And they got her on a conspiracy charge because other people broke into the lab and took animals out and smashed it up. And she didn't do it. And the prosecution didn't even let she did it. She just reported on it as an activist. And they charged with a conspiracy. she ended up in jail for five years.

Prison, federal prison. Did she go to trial? She went to trial and she lost. Yeah, so they, right. Well, I was going to say she could have taken a plea, but that's what I meant was. So she went to trial. Because she didn't do it. Right.

And so they just connected her saying, no, did they allege that she knew it was going to happen or she was in contact with the people prior to? Because I don't see how you could be in a conspiracy after the fact. Yeah, you can't be in a conspiracy. act, or at least you cannot be held liable for the conduct of the conspiracy until you've joined it. But the prosecution alleged that she was part of a conspiracy, even with unknown conspirators. And because she was running this website that was encouraging and supporting people for doing these forms of direct actions, she was liable for it. There's a lot of really good

reporting on this from back in the mid-2000s. But it's true. And this is a young woman who we graduated magna cum laude from n yu she was on her way to law school had a beautiful and important life ahead of her and had a lot to contribute to society and set and set it up in federal prison for five years um yeah i was going to say uh yeah that's the problem with conspiracy a lot of people think oh conspiracy that's like the three of us get together and talk about robbing a bank no no that can be that i'm selling drugs to jimmy and then jimmy goes and sells drugs to tom and then tom goes to sell drugs and gets into gets into an argument with the guy and shoots him and i get charged with a murder and you go yeah but i didn't know anything i don't even know i don't even know

that guy i sold to him he sold it doesn't matter i didn't know he had a gun i didn't know it doesn't matter conspiracy the left hand doesn't have to go with the right hand it's a really absolutely right fucked up law no there are a lot of first amendment scholars and it's it's it's it's fraud because a lot of it is just expressive activity it's just you know we're talking to each other and i say because the the elements of conspiracy they have to be proven in most states is just an agreement in some act in further into that agreement so if you and i agree and we say like yeah you know it's so messed up that people are torturing these beagles someone should just break in there you know don't you think someone should do it's like yeah let's someone should do it and it could be that

potentially vague. And then as long as I take some act and furtherance of that agreement, and that act could be a completely legal action. It could be I sharpen someone's pencil so they could track the plan. It could be I ran a website talking about how important it is for people to do direct action. And then as you noted, even if someone does something outside of the scope of your agreement, you know, as long as it's a reasonably foreseeable consequence of your agreement and the

prosecution can prove that, you're guilty of it too. So, you know, maybe I agree to just. a drug deal, but the prosecution says, well, it's reasonably foreseeable that someone could pull a gun and shoot somebody. And that's what your co-conspirator did. So you ran out guilty of murder. And I thought, wait, I just thought I was signing on a pot deal. And I wasn't even directly doing it. I just thought, like, you know, I'm glad you're selling pot. Let me give you my pencil so you can write down the amounts of money or the amounts of pot that you need to actually bring to the deal. Well, I've now agreed to the conspiracy. I've taken an

act in furtherance of it because I, the email pencil that you wrote down the amount of pot system right and now i'm being charged of murk and that's kind of what happened to warn i knew a guy that got lumped into a conspiracy because it was a real estate conspiracy actually the FBI showed up at some of his co-defendants houses and to ask questions knocked on the door he opened the door and they were like listen man the FBI just came by and start started telling him what was going on now they were wired by the way and he goes he was man he said um bro if i was you i'd get a lawyer I wouldn't talk to him at all. I did a lawyer.

Obstruction of justice they hit him with. Wow. He's like, I suggested that they said, no, you, you suggested. They were saying you suggested them, you know, obstructing justice. Justice. So he got hit with that conspiracy to obstruct justice by telling them not to talk to him and get a lawyer. But he was like that. Which is right.

Yeah. But he also took a plea, by the way. He took a plea because he was scared and he got a public defender. The public defender was like, listen, I know what you're thinking. You just told them about what they're. constitutional right is but when they get in front of a jury they're not going to play in it that way and he was scared and he got a couple years for it and yeah i've heard i mean i could you know there i've got two or three other ridiculous examples yeah of the same thing where they just threw someone into a

conspiracy because they were like now you same thing i had a guy one time he got two or three years because which actually was an fbi agent or a DEA agent was wired up and was came to a drug deal they went to this guy's house he's like he's not selling drugs but the drug dealer was there so they the other drug dealer brought this guy the FBI or the DEA informant to the house and while he's sitting on the couch and they're talking about the drug deal he said listen man you don't know him and he goes I'm telling you right now he said that guy looks like a cop you don't know him he's I wouldn't sell him nothing when they eventually bust him his name got thrown in yep just because he said that because you said don't sell them yeah wow you know there's so many it's ridiculous be so subtle

that's why and i get contacted not so much anymore but i used to get contacted all the time where guys are like hey um can i talk to you and i was like uh yeah can we get on phone and talk or i could come see you man i just want you to answer some questions i've got someone doing you know eventually you realize okay they're talking about they've got some kind of scam or a fraud that they're doing Yep. And I'm like, no. And no, you don't have to do anything. I'm like, no. No, just, just hear me out. I said, I don't want to hear you out. Because I said, do you understand that just be hearing you out? I'm already indicted. And they were like, why is that? I said, because when you get indicted, they're going to search your phone. They're going to find my information. They're going to find out that you talk to me. Yeah. Right. I said, right. I've been indicted. They're going to throw me in and the conspiracy. I said, and I'm done. I said, if I contribute in any way to your crime, I'm going to be a part of that conspiracy. No, but you, well, what if you don't get any money? or it doesn't matter. It's not about money. Yeah, you don't have to receive any benefit from it as long as you agree. People don't understand that. Right. Yeah, it's scary. People don't understand how completely

messed up our own government is and how much our criminal justice system just railroads people in the most. And like occasionally hear a story that gives you some sense of how messed up it is. But the scale of it is just unfalatable. And I really mean unthalatable because we got millions of people locked up in this country. It's like 1.7 million, so it's almost 2,000 people. Which is far higher than almost any of the country in the world. I mean, we complain about all these dictatorships that are locking people up, like Russian and the vulnerability.

And we don't realize, you know, our per capita rate of incarceration, I think, is higher than any other medium-sized or large country in the world. We have six times higher right of incarceration in the United States than communist China. Xi Jinping is a brutal dictator who's crushed his own people, and we lock up six times as many people in this country. So let's condemn Xi Jinping in China for sure. That is a messed up government, screwing a lot of people. Our government is messed up and screwing a lot of people too,

and it's not living up to our constitutional ideals. Yeah, but we have better marketing. That's really what it is. It really is. That's what it comes down to. Like home of the, you know, home of the, what is it, home of the brave land of the free. I mean, it's like from the, from the,

get go it's built in they good market yeah it is maybe so and then all these programs that make it seem like you know like yeah love law and order where where jim mccoy finds i think it's jim mccoy he finds out that he convicted the wrong person he wakes up the cops in the middle of the night and they go to the prison and they they they want to get the guy out immediately say stop it bro that's not what they do no they dig their heels and they fight tooth and nail to keep innocent people in jail over and over again yeah um yeah i don't know i i'm hope hopefully this works out you know you're going to go so you're going to go to trial you want to trial march 18th it starts oh my god now i mean listen you know

this is funny because i i've talked to people all the time that either had been a trial or about to go to trial and you know there and they'll ask like my advice and that sort of thing and you know to me and you know you don't need my advice but here's what scares the hell out of me is that if you're guilty you're 100% going to be found guilty if you're innocent you've got about a 50% chance

of being found guilty that's a problem people like well yeah but I didn't do anything if only it worked like that yeah I know and then of course it's funny because we have

a constitutional presumption of innocence but the way the system works you don't actually get it no you actually have a guy I was locked up with which was guilty but during his trial

he said it's funny because during voir dire, they were going around asking all, you know, can you, do you feel you can look at the evidence and find him, you know, not guilty and be, or be open-minded? For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery.

Whatever the term is. And the guy goes, I don't know. He did something. And they went, they go, what? He said, he goes, he was indicted on 37 counts of wire fraud. He goes, he's guilty of something. And the guy I knew, who was obviously the defendant, he said, I, hey, that guy needs out. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what he said was I appreciated him saying that. Saying that. Wow. He said because he just said what every member of the jury already thought. And he said, at least they kicked him, you know, loose. He said, but everybody else. And keep in mind, this is a guy that.

for I don't know like half a day all the prosecution did was keep mind this are a bunch of people that couldn't get themselves at a jury duty and probably are all you know middle class or lower middle class and are struggling with their bills yep and they put my my buddy was on the stand for half the day where all the prosecution did was go through all the checks and money he had spent in the last five years what's this check for I don't know when we went to Las Vegas. And what's this meal for? Well, you spent $3,700. What's that for? We lost to the casino. What about this? This is $650. It's like, we went to dinner at such and such.

Oh, well, what about this? Oh, well, that 11,000, that was a vacation. We went for a week to such and such. So, oh, how much was your Mercedes again? How much was the Bentley? How much was the house? He said, for half the day. He said, listen, he said, by the time, they were done going over all the money and all the expenses and everything.

He's like, I could look at the jury and tell these people hated my gut. to you yeah right because they're struggling right now and now they're even in more struggling me and harder because now they just had to take a week off of off of work to get paid 30 bucks a day or whatever they're reimbursed this you know and this guy he's like like I get it like I was sitting there looking at these people thinking Jesus man this guy like because I paid a hundred dollars for a stake in Vegas now I got to go to prison for you know 17 years or whatever and what's funny is too he was offered like three years you know how often they'll get offered two three years and then they go no fuck that i'm gonna go to trial and their lawyer will tell them like

look they can only really convict you of this and you'll get five years then they get found guilty and the guy gets 17 years it's like you said you said the most they could convict me i was like oh i know but during the trial they proved this and proved this and i didn't realize that this and you're done no multiple guys were always over a year and they got 15 years 20 years 17 years 19 years i know a guy that got 19 years they had offered him two years Yeah. And you know what the one of the worst things is all these long sentences we're talking people in jail for, including yours, frankly, there's no evidence that that actually deter his crime. There's been a lot of studies of this that you send people in jail longer. It was a lot of taxpayer money for nothing. It doesn't deter any crime. Their argument is it removes them from society. So I understand. And it does. But here's the thing. Like, if I had been in prison for four years, within four or five years, listen, I knew. one thing for sure I'm better off sleeping in someone's spare room working a minimum wage

job than coming back and I'm okay with I agree I didn't need to get a 26 year to sentence I didn't need to do 13 years to learn that so so I definitely think I think you could cut these sentences by 66% yeah and give these guys all the value yeah well and give these guys incentive to you know train them you know tell them look you got to pass this class you're you got to pass this course before you know or you don't get your 60% good time you're going to do your whole 15 years you want to get out in five pass this class take this course you know and and you'll get you get your good time you'll be out in five years like at least most of these guys get out they have no marketable skills they've been drug dealers their whole life what are they going to do

now yeah you know yeah yeah yeah was your experience in jail because my experience i've been to prison but I've been in jail many times. And every time I've been in jail, probably the finding experience of jail is that no one actually gives a shit about you or anyone else there. Right. They just treat everyone like shit. And in particular, this idea, oh, we're trying to correct this bad behavior and we want to rehabilitate people and make them into better people.

I didn't even get, I didn't even get a glimpse of that anytime. How long were you locked up? So this stay was only 38 days, which is my only. But I've been in jail, you know, a couple dozen times, but only for like one or two nights. But every time I've been there, I've never felt like, and I know prison supposedly is a little better. There's a little more kind of, you know, the more programs and rehabilitation efforts. But the most distinctive feature of jail for me is just how everyone just does not give a damn about you or anywhere else there. You're just scum. You know, they don't like you.

Yeah. I always say it's a great equalizer. Like it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or you're, you're um yep you're raising the projects you're going to be treated just the same you're all guard just on you everyone's piece of shit and and jail is worse than prison you know jail is always worse so if you went to prison and for a crime like yours you and in cal are you in california not in california you'd go straight to a camp yeah in in the district and on the east coast most of the time they send you to a low security prison which is not is just above a camp like it's not a big deal it's mostly nonviolent and so you'll you go straight to a camp the problem is you guys have a lot of cartel members and gang related stuff there that they don't have that much on the

east coast and and there's all there are programs you know they're behind you you sign up and maybe two years later you get into the program to learn how to lay drywall yeah or learn how to be a i don't know about carbon electrician i know they have electrician programs they have uh they have shoot how to be I forget the name of it shit like to be a farmer I figure what they call that they have a horticulture program or something quarter culture thank you

horticulture they have you know how to basically run a restaurant how to which you know some of them are good there are some computer programs where they try and teach you like Windows and things but honestly you're not you're really watching a video because they won't let you interact on the computer and

you're learning on like Windows 95 or something like it's They have the program to say, oh, we have a program. And that meets the requirement and then they get funding and then whoever goes away. They don't realize like the program that you're teaching is a video on an outdated, you know, app or service or whatever. It's like that's not, you're not teaching anything. It's really up to you as the individual to try and figure out. The staff is not going to help you.

And I know guys that have gotten college degrees, but they also. They also had almost no help from the staff. And maybe they had some advocate on the outside that helped them. And they, you know, and you're limited on what you can get. You know, you're not going to get anything in the sciences or anything. You might get something and, you know, you know, something more, I don't know, art based or, uh, um, it's more of a, you're probably going to get like a BA and something not like a, um, Yep.

But anyway, yeah, it's totally up to you. But the low, like lows and camps are, not that there's not violence, it's more like a rough high school. But honestly, you know, you keep your head down. And there's very, you know, you hear these horror stories, you know, people getting stabbed and getting beat up. But the truth is that if you get hurt in prison or attacked or stabbed or beat up, you brought it on your side. Yourself. Your self, yeah. Very seldom does that just randomly happen.

Spence honestly. Yeah. I would say, you know, the people, what gets people in trouble is, one, they gossip about other people. You know, an old woman sewing circle. Yeah, they hate it. Yeah. Yeah.

So you don't, you know, so you be, be polite, don't gossip, don't gamble, don't run up debts, don't borrow anything, you know, don't. So, you know, those are the kinds of things that, you know, that that get people in trouble and and honestly once you've been there to two months or so you get a little click a little group of guys that you kind of know and the next thing you know you've got a little little circle of friends and you kind of stick within that circle and the time start you know you get on a routine and you know before you know it your sentence you start you look up and it's been six months and you look up again and it's you know and there are there are good people in

in prison. Absolutely. They're really good people in prison. And there are horrific people in prison too. But yeah, there are good people. But it's not like you're like, oh, I'm surrounded by horrible people. There's some, you know, the worst thing is the guys that are in there for drugs because you'll see them without the drugs and they're normal people.

And I've seen multiple people, you know, they're like, oh, yeah, I was hooked on oxies. Oh, okay. And then they'll tell you their story is like, it's, it's outlandish and horrific. And you're like, God, you can't believe you did that. I know, I couldn't believe. Yeah. You know, now that I'm sober, I can't believe it either. I can, yeah.

And then they leave. And then two years later, they come back. Yeah. They've done another wild, crazy thing. They got back on drugs. They came back. They got no treatment when they were there. You know, they get out.

They come back. They're like, oh, God, you won't believe what happened. I'm assuming you got back on drugs. Oh, you can't believe. You're not going to believe this. I got new charges. I got six years this time. You're like, oh, my God.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, you're so sad because it's, I mean, there's enormous amount of scientific research showing now that addiction is actually the disease. There are some people who just literally cannot prevent themselves from using drugs if they're even remotely available. Like there's literally brain wiring that prevents them. Like I got a family member, not close family member, who was addicted to heroin. And, you know, there's some people's brains who just have our propensity for this sort of addiction. and she just turned into kind of a demon where like I mean everywhere she went she just stole

everything because she needed to feed her drug habit so like lock on your house all your stuff's gone and it's it's it's it's almost like a machine that's just taking over this living creature and she can't stop and I know that that was true there are two things to define every inmate I talked to when I was in jail one was addiction even the ones who were not in on some drug-related crime You know, like my cellmate, my cellie was in on grand theft. But he was in on grand theft because he was addicted to meth. And he was on meth when he stole the car. So it's like I think just about 100% of the people I talked to had some sort of drug problem.

That was part of the reason they were in jail. And the second reason, which is also really not people's fault, is loneliness. There were a ton of just really disconnected people or didn't have family. They didn't have a support number. they had no one to be accountable to or would hold them accountable, right? And so they were just lost. And it's really sad because we should be helping people

or lonely and addicted to drugs, not throwing them in the cages because I just, I don't see any value in it. And I'll just give you one concrete example. You're right, California does have some gangs. You know, half of the sublock in my jail was controlled by Mexican gangs. There were the Nortenas, and I forget what they're called, but two gangs, basically.

And they controlled out the cell walk. And I think it was like day two or three. There was a fight that broke out an entire jail, not just our block, but the entire jail wouldn't have locked out because a drunk gang member slug your cop and everything got shut down. And so we're not allowed to come out of ourselves at all for like two days after that. And they searched everything. It was a huge catastrophe. And given this is a pretty violent place and we just had a violent episode, you might think

that the jail would be interested in. interventions that would do violence like meditation there's a lot of evidence that meditation helps you have emotional self-control i'm a huge meditator i believe in our train and guided people in meditations for most the last 10 years and so i just asked the the COs in my jail after the staff of hey how would you feel if i just did a meditation in the corner every day and they said absolutely not you're not allowed to do that because that's organizing you know it's like so they wouldn't let me even meditate by other people um and it just shows you how broken the system because it's just look you got all this violence and you've got you know these people who

desperately need whether it's mental health support you know meditation social support and we don't give them anything they actually need to get better and even when it has no cost of the state and you've got someone in who's a trained meditator and i'm buddhist and i've done this and i've done this a lot of people and i think we could have helped some of those people with meditation and they're like no you can't do that because it's not in the rules and anytime there's a group of people doing something they're stare. Yeah. Yeah, they don't like, they don't like organizing. I was going to say it's funny like you go to let's say you made drugs legal. Uh-huh. You know, they'd become extremely inexpensive. Yeah, they're regulated, they're super inexpensive. And you tax them and you take that money and you put

that into drug rehabs, which seems funny because people are like, why not just make drugs illegal? Stop it. You're not going to get rid of them. So stop, figure out something else. So open up drug rehabs that are free and then reduce the prison population or the sentences by 66% yeah absolutely 60% 70% billions of dollars billions of dollars say and take a percentage of that just a percentage and put that into drug rehabs now when people say I have a problem they can go sign into a drug rehab that doesn't seem like a halfway house that's a decent clean well-run half a drug treatment center that they can check into for 30 days or 60 or 90 days. And then they can get clean, help us,

have a support system help get them back on their feet somehow. You know, even if you have to put that on and say, look, it costs us, we spent $25,000. We're going to put that on your credit. You're going to have to make payments. And we're going to give you six months to, like your student loans, six months, you're in a house, you've got a job, six months to start making payments, zero interest rate, whatever.

Make it like a student loan. You can't bankrupt it. You can't get rid of it. Okay. You know, I'm not saying it's just free housing and therapy, but how much, if you did the math, the amount of money, the government would save and be helping people, as opposed to saying, here, you're going to jail for 15 years and we're going to let you out with virtually no money, put you in a halfway house, tell, and now I have to turn around and I have to go apply for jobs and tell people that I'm a convicted felon. And I got to work. I have no car. I have no clothes.

When I got out of prison, I had like two pairs of sweatpants and like four t-shirts. Yeah. You know? Like if somebody hadn't given me 400 bucks, I wouldn't have been able to like literally a couple, about two days after I got to the halfway house, I went to Walmart and spent 300 bucks on clothes. I bought an entire wardrobe with 300 bucks and wore those, by the way, didn't buy anything else. that's not true i went to marshals and i bought a white long sleeve shirt about about four months or five months after i got out of prison because i had to go do it a like a show and i did buy a a black shirt that's it and you know what marshals is you know what marshals is yeah no it's like super cheap it's like it's like 12 bucks it's like 12 bucks you know what i'm saying so like literally

bought almost no no new clothes for and still have a couple of a pair of blue jewell So you still have the jeans from when you just got out of prison? Yeah. It's amazing. You know, it's funny. I met my wife in the halfway house. Do you still wear them? Yeah, of course.

That's awesome. That's so cool. I met my wife in the halfway house. Wow. She did five years for a meth conspiracy. And what's funny is, you know, I lived in someone's spare room and she lived in her dad's spare room. So, you know, we didn't want to go over there to see each other.

see each other so i would get like a hotel room i remember one time because when you go to the halfway house typically you're carrying your stuff around everywhere right like you have a locker but a lot of time like you're going to go to work you want to change clothes you want to come back you want you know so everybody tends to buy these black book bags or i would say book bag what are they she calls them something else backpack a backpack so we went to a hotel met at a hotel one time she got out of her truck i got out of my little jeep they're both piece of of garbage car cars we pull in we get out we both walk out with our black backpack and this is months after we've been out of the halfway house and i go you still got your black your backpack she

says you do and i said we have and so we walk we walk upstairs and we put our stuff down and i open my we both opened our backpack to kind of pull out some clothes right we both kind of come from work and we both at colvin the prison i was at they sell a Um, you know, I forget what you, what you want to call this, a amenities kid or something. Um, basically like where you would put your, your, your soap and your, your hairspray and your, um, uh, you know, your, your, your, your shampoo, but it's a clear plastic bag that's maybe 12 inches. It's like a little bag with a zipper, but it's clear so that the guards can see through it. So everything's clear in prison. So what's funny is we both end up unzipping our black

backpack and pull out our plastic kits and sit them down. She goes, you still have your, whatever she called it, makeup kit or whatever. I was like, yeah, I was like, I mean, it's still, it's fine. It's a, she's like, no, me too. I get it. And, um, listen, we both just burst out laughing. I was like, you know, like, I'm broke. I'm like, I'm starting over.

I don't have time. I can't go buy a nice little kit. I'm not buying a nice duffel bag. This has worked and I'm broke. But, you know, it was just. It was super funny how many things like that, you know, wearing the same t-shirt that you wore for, you know, listen, I still, I had, I don't think I have them anymore, but I had some of the white t-shirts that I had in prison.

I had them. I wore them for years afterwards. Why? Because they worked and I'm saving money and I'm starting over and I don't care what you think. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

When I was in jail, the only, I think clothing you were allowed to buy was underwear. I didn't buy any. I was too cheap. I got three pairs. That's going to be enough. Yeah. Well, you're thinking I'm probably out of here soon. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't sure.

The max sentence I could have been given six years and ran out, and I've given me 90 days. And I served 38 based on time soon. So, yeah, it's pretty wild. I mean, it's kind of mind-boy. I mean, it makes me feel very lucky, honestly, that I've got friends and family who supported me when I came out because I didn't have to go through all that hardship. I had a place to stay out of car and all the things I needed. Yeah, but for a lot of people, it's, that's not true.

And it's inconceivable. I mean, honestly, your story is kind of mind-blowing that you were able to bounce. back from that and get to where you are today. Congrats to you, my friend, because you're the rare success story among all the people who are incarcerated. Mostly what I've seen from people are incarcerated is it breaks them and they're,

they come out. You can understand why someone goes back to crime and drugs when they've taken everything from you and you have no other sources of work. That's all they know. Right. Well, I also think the problem is a lot of people are not long-term thinkers. Like, you know, they think, oh, well, I need

$5,000 for this. I'll, don't have how am i got i get paid this much a week i'll never i'll never have five thousand like what wait a minute you can you put you know you put whatever 17 dollars a day away and you know what i'm saying or what you know you start adding it like but they can't realize that hey in five months i'll have five grand they don't think like that they they just can't see that far most people most people are paycheck people they say a week a day maybe a month but they don't they don't think annually they certainly don't think within you know decades so but i'm you know i'm lucky because i'm you know i do think that way and i also listen my my priorities or

my priorities had shifted dramatically in prison and i i had you know it's very thankful for anything i had and i was and i came out although i'm i'm still arrogant i became much more humble like i realized being in prison like it's better to be running someone's spare room i'll rents and you're not hot. Yep. Right. I don't need all those things. All those things that I thought were so important are not important.

Yeah. So what caused that? What do you think made you humble? Was it just kind of the equalizing effect of being around all these people who are considered the lowest of the low? Yeah. I mean, and I think what was funny was that all the people and friends and family that I had when I went in that pretty much, not all of them. I mean, my mom was there, you know, and I had one or two friends that came, you know, came to visit me. But most of those people, the people that I really gave the most to, you know, like you, you made a million dollars off of me and my scam through you, within two years, you were given half a million dollars, you know, for this guy. This guy made hundreds of thousands of those people abandoned me. Those people that I thought were my good friends. You start to, I think you just kind of reprioritize. And you're around people all day that are, you know, you're around a bunch of hustlers that just want to get something out of you.

right they're they're scumbags and you start to realize that you get a group of friends that don't want to be anything but friends it was probably the first time of my life i had guys that wanted to hang out just to talk just to hang out wow just to hang out where everybody else i have are hung out with it was about business and how could we make money how can you help me make money how can i help you make how can we help each other make money how can we well that was no longer the case so then you just start getting people that are just hanging out with you because they like you and doing things for you because they're interested in what you're doing.

Like I started writing guys stories. So guys are helping me do research on the story. Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine.

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Just because they thought what I was doing was cool and they like to see that in three months, you'd hand them a 12 pages and they'd read this 8,000 word story and they'd be like, wow, man, this is amazing and oh my gosh. And in a way they're like, and I helped contribute to this. I did a lot of the research, you know. um yeah i think that was that that it was it was just a shift that and i say this all the time is that i have a buddy pete who says um who said you know you can't go to prison thinking the same way that led you to prison and get out of prison you know and not not go back

you know you you can't you can't leave prison with the same the same thought process that led you there and not expect to come back you have to change something and And the sooner, really, and a part of that was the sooner you realize that nobody put you there, you put you there. You're the, as soon as you start realizing, this is all my fault. Yeah. That fundamentally changed, you know, my thought process was like, nobody put me here but me. I'm the reason I'm here. And most guys don't do that.

Most guys spend their whole bit blaming other people. Yeah, this guy snitched on me. This guy's a piece of garbage. I never had a chance. I never this, I never that, well, you know, and some of that may be true, but you're here now and none of that's helping you. Yeah. Yeah, no, I definitely sensed a lot of that when I was in prison. I think it's hard.

So have you found yourself after you got out of jail? Have you been able to kind of transform your relationships now so that they're, you surround yourself with people actually just care about you instead of trying to get something out of you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I'm very honest up front. Like I, if somebody's dealing with me or saying something, I'm like, listen I can't pay you anything yeah if you're doing this you're doing this out of the goodness of your own heart heart yeah um you know i i'm not in listen even like people will come and and

they'll fly in to be to do the podcast in person yeah you know they'll they'll say hey man listen i'm gonna fly in do you you know can you reimburse me for my plane ticket and i got i'm gonna stay the night in my hotel i'm like no we can do a street yard yeah and they're like well yeah but i want to do it in person i understand you want to do it in person and i'll get more views if you do it in person and that makes me money if you do it in person but if i pay you to come in then it off that's all of that and i may actually lose money so you know i and i i don't feel it's appropriate for me to pay you for something that is essentially news sure and by paying you then you want to perform and i and i i just feel like that's an issue and i'm not in a position to pay you

this is how i pay my bills and i'm you know so i give them that thing and i'm like but listen we can do a stream yard and and typically that that quashes it. They're like, you know, I get it. I get it. And they do want to get more views. And so if it's possible, they fly themselves. But yeah, I was just trying to be honest up front to everybody I deal with. And that's just the best way. And 95% of the time they lean into it. They're okay with with that. So I was going to ask you a question. We never did talk about like how are you funding your endeavor? Yeah. So that we've been lucky enough to have thousands of people over the country and all the

world support us in the last 10 years. I mean, when we started my prior organization direct action everywhere in 2012, I mean, it was self-funded because I had been a corporate lawyer by that point for three, four years and had something like half a mill on the bank because

corporate law is very lucrative and I had no bills. I had not ever had much of a personal life and did very well. and quite for law and got very big bonuses. But starting in, I left my firm in 2014, I think it was. I left a firm called DLA Piper. It's literally the largest law firm in the world.

And then self-funded for a little while. Actually, started my own legal practice on the side. So I was still doing about 20 hours a week in litigation and transactional work for basically tech companies in the Bay Area. And make me a lot of money off, but I ultimately had to give it up. Starting in about 2015, when our work started really blowing. up and we had, you know, thousands of people participating, and I was supposedly the leader. I just, it was impossible to manage that project and also be responsible as a lawyer to my clients.

So we ended the firm. It's probably 2016 or 2017 that we officially ended it, but by 2015, I was stepping out. I was a managing partner of my own law firm from 2014 to 2017 or so. And we have some big clients, more like Honda and Intel, that I still kind of regret giving it up because it was a very lucrative practice. It didn't take that much work. But again, it just wasn't responsible to continue doing that. And then starting in about 27, 2018, we just had thousands and thousands of people. You know, at some point, I don't remember exactly how many thousands of members we had.

We had members who were contributing five, 10 bucks a month, just saying, look, I want animals he rescued. I want this stuff to be exposed. And I want people to fight in court for the idea that animals have rights. There's a difference with a puppy and a dent in can. Right. There's a difference with being a piglet and a piece of garbage you're thrown to a landfill. And I think the law should recognize that. And, you know, we want to just work and find that.

So, you know, as much as I'd like to take credit for this work, the reality is we've had a huge team, not just the immediate team members who've been instrumental, the lawyers, the other occupies and investigators, some of a lot of them do the work we do. But I think at this one, it's tens of thousands, not even thousands of people who chipped in. Sometimes it's two bucks a month. And that, you know, pays for veterinary care for an animal who's rusty, that pays for our legal chees, for an expert witness we need to hire. So it's been a huge, huge team

and really, really gratifying to see how many Americans really do want to see animals protected from cruelty. In this next case, we'll be in many ways the most powerful example of that because most people do not know their dogs being treated like test tubes who are being tortured in ways you could not even imagine. This trial will be an opportunity to blow the lid open on that.

What is the name of the organization? Did you start an organization or is it nameless? actually started dozens of organizations, I think, at this point, since 2007. I mean, I actually started organizations even before I left to Northwestern. So the most prominent organization I started as a group called Direct Action Everywhere. It's a grassroots animal rights network. It's not even an organization. It's a movement, really. There have been at least thousands, probably at this point, tens of thousands of people participating in that network. And it's what I'm most well known for. But more recently, I started a new organization called The Simple Heart Initiative

that is razor focused on rescuing animals. That's what we do. That's what we believe in. That's what we encourage and support other people in doing. And we believe the efforts are legal. And we're testing out the legality of these efforts in the court of law and including this next court case. And, you know, again, we've just been lucky to have a lot of people.

So like my substack has, I think 35,000 subscribers now. And I don't remember how many hundreds of paying subscribers. And paying subscribers don't actually get anything different. So on some level, it's like, why are you paying for stuff I'm giving everyone for free? But we have hundreds of people who just, they like the work, they like the content, so they chip in a few bucks. And, you know, I'd like to think that we're adding some value to their lives, just knowing that they're part of something. Because, you know, so many people go to work every day and they're like, this job is so stupid. You know, kind of the way I was when I was a corporate lawyer, I was making a lot of money, but I was going to sleep.

I'm wondering, like, what am I doing my life? Right. And one thing that did make me feel better when I was a corporal lawyer, I didn't just save money for my own future efforts, but I was a big donor at all these charities. And it was a lot of times people think, like, I don't have money to give to good cause. And it's like, you can't, you don't have money not to give because when you give, you actually feel better every day. Your life becomes better.

It's like one of the best things you can do to make your life meaningful and it make you happier as a person. And there's evidence of this, you know, that when you give to other causes and when you're a generous person, to your friends, your family members in the chair of the closet, you end up becoming a more productive and happier member of society. And I saw that in my personal life because even when I was a corporal lawyer, the one thing that made me happy every day was, you know, knowing that I adopted some animal at a sanctuary and saying, like, okay, that animal is able to get the vendor care she needs

or she's able to get the food she needs every day because of me. That made me chill good. Yeah, I was going to say, people will donate, you know, they'll send me like to my PayPal, like three bucks, two bucks. And I have people that will, you know, say, or somebody to cash at me $4 or $7 for a cup of coffee. You know, hey, coffee is on me. It's, you know, I know it's silly. But what's funny.

It's beautiful. It's a beautiful. It is because I was like, this guy doesn't owe me anything. Anything. I know. You know, so, you know, and I'll have guys like, oh, what's $2 going to do? Bro, what are you telling me to know me? Yeah.

Like that's, yeah, it's not the amount. It's, it's the mentality behind it. And just the generosity of people. Right. And the thing is, I mean, I'm sure you've experienced this, too, when you see people generous, too, you want to be generous too. It just makes all this better. When we're all generous, it makes the world a better place.

And in contrast, when we're cool to each other, and this is one of the fundamental reasons why these factory farms are so evil. It's not just that they're cool to animals. They make all of us cool. Like the levels of domestic violence against farm workers is astonishingly high. Right. You know, the same companies and CEOs, this guy went along if he tortures animals. Surprise, surprise, he's caught up on a human trafficking scandal as well.

And again, he hasn't been held accountable. he's making money off of torturing not just animals with human beings when you're cruel to animals you'll be cruel to other living beings including human beings as well so why not just be generous and kind to everyone that's a better world for all this we can get there we will get there did you ever there's a documentary on um netflix called ordinary men have you seen it not i've heard people i'm sure you've heard this uh someone will talk about and i'm you know and i know during in a And, you know, high school when you're taking these classes and you start to learn about, you know, middle school, high school, start to learn about World War II. Right. And first thing every kid, teenager says is, well, I would never do that. You know, like that would never happen in America. That would never, you know, you would, you know, you'd never see people be that, you know, cruel to one group, you know, because, you know, they were, you know, the, the, the, obviously the Jews are being, you know, Brandon with these. They've, they've got these yellow. Everybody has to wear a yellow star David, and they're taking their houses and they're crashing their, destroying their businesses, and they're throwing them in concentration camps. And everybody knows the story. But most people will say, I would never participate in that. I would never do that. So there's a word, yeah, but they would. There's a documentary that talks about they're like, who made up these special, special units that would go and round up the Jews and take them out into a field and have them dig their own graves, a one long grave, and then execute them. And the men that made up those groups were pharmacists, CPAs, you know, lawyers. Like they were regular people that were doing this. And all of them were saying when the, when the Nazis took over and the things that were slowly happening were all saying they didn't want to do the Nazi salute. They didn't agree with what was happening.

They were disgusted by this. And within a year or so, when they were called up and asked to join these special. groups. They did it. They did it willingly. You know, and so people say, I would never do it. No, you would do it. People become very, very quickly, especially in groups, you know this, especially in groups, they become very desensitized to all kinds of evils. People don't want to think that about themselves, but they would. You know, you would do it. And so I can see that in the, in the animal, you know, industry, right? Yeah. I could see being. You know, if you're able to, if you're able to be cruel to dogs and, you know, dogs and cows and

because, let's fight, cows are just, you know, they're just these big stupid, you know, they don't want to hurt anybody. You can walk right up to them, grab by the head. You can, you can, you can rub their ears. They run, they lean into you. They'll follow you. Yep. You know, they're like, gentle. Yeah, they're like, they're super gentle, like, oh, practically like dogs, you know, they'll follow like you know you they'll recognize you um but yeah if you can be cruel in that sense you can carry that over to other parts of your life yeah yeah and if you're being taught that this is a thing to do and authority figures are telling you it's a thing to do your boss uh president and if you get away with things police officer yeah and you get away with it then it'll happen it becomes systematized

it becomes a part of just the system and most people don't really think or rethink the systems Oftentimes, even though the system's hurting you, you don't really think about it. You know, people are trapped in various habits and patterns of behavior that are harming themselves and they can't even get out of it. I mean, much less a system that's harming somebody else. It's hard. You know, it's one of the scary things about human psychology, right, that we're all able to do these awful things. And that's definitely the loss of World War II. It's scary.

What I was going to say, what's funny is you get away with a small crime, which is what, like, in my case, I got a way. away with a small crime and I became a little bit more emboldened and then it got a little bit worse and a little bit and then it it just got every time I got away with it I became more and more emboldened by like this is okay I'm good at this it's you know I'm saying this is what I'm supposed to be doing this is I'm very you know I can get away with it because I'm so good at it like you become like you start to think you can do anything and get away with it yeah I can I can see that happening yeah you know but the the reverse can also be true cycles of generosity. You have vicious cycles, but many of virtuous cycles, too. There's even social

scientific literature on this that, you know, a lot of times, like, as people look at a story like mine and say, like, oh my God, I could never do something like that, you know, rescue a farm animal or breaking a lab to rescue a beagle. Even if I thought it was the right thing to do. Just it seems scary, it's risky. And, you know, for me, fundamentally, it started with something as stupid as just being willing to donate a little money to an animal charity and just that small sacrifice and say, I'm like, oh, you know, I thought it was going to be really hard, but I can give $5 a month. And then the next month I'm like, oh, it's not just I can get $5 a month.

I can go out there and analyze leaflets or show people video studies and educate people. And then you go from there, going to a protest. And then eventually, so, you know, you can create virtuous cycles, too. The thing is, I mean, and I'm betting this is true of your experience, too, that one of the thing that leads people down both vicious and virtuous cycles is their capacity for risk. they're willing to take it that little step further. A lot of people just stop. There's a lot of people who go down and escalate it one way or the other

and they get to a certain point and say, like, okay, I'm done. Right. And when it becomes a crime and, you know, vicious cycles are self-hard, obviously you want to stop. Like, no, don't go from meth to heroin. Don't take that next step. Right. But with virtuous cycles, you actually want to get on that escalator because you can grow

in these tremendous ways. And there's, you know, like if you read the talent code or, you know, Malcolm Gravel's book Outliers about how people become tremendously good at things, too, just in skill, too. A lot of it, it's not like someone becomes a world's greatest chess player or violin player one night. It's they get on this little escalator and they get this little, little bipper dopamine because they see, oh man, I won that game.

That's kind of surprising. I didn't think I was very good at chess. And they think, well, let me play another game. And maybe they lose the next five games, but they realize, oh, by the sixth game, I've learned something and I can beat people a little better. and they go up that virtuous cycle but the key thing is at every step of the way

I'm not saying you challenge yourself to the point like if you're a beginning chess player don't go up against a grandmaster but you've got to be willing to take that next step and that's probably true again both vicious cycles and virtuous cycles whether you become a cruel mastermind or you know mother Teresa

either way it's because you're willing to push yourself away you know right right well listen so if people wanted to donate do you have a link that you can give me and I can put in the yeah just go to simpleheart.org and you can support the newsletter and that's that's the way we primarily

accept contributions you're part of the team will be invited to our Slack and you can join the conversation and I guess that's the one kind of part but honestly we we invite people to the Slack even if you don't contribute but you know I always say even more important than contributing to our work and becoming a donor is just finding your own power I just I really think that there's so many people out there who, when they learn about, especially what happens to dogs, like dogs, come on, dogs.

Like, they realize they have some power to create change. And that could be as simple as voluntary or local shelter, you know, or adopting a dog in a lot of these dogs who, after years of torment, they just get them getting killed. And what if you think about animal experiments? And I think they should be abolished entirely. But if you think some of them are justified, after you've been caging and torturing this dog for five years. She deserves a loving home and sometimes hard to find homes for these poor creatures because they're so broken. They've got developmental problems. They've got psychological

problems. Maybe your sacrifices, you adopt one of those dogs, you know, because they need help. They need families. They're going to love them unconditionally. But whatever it is that you can do, you know, and maybe that even just means being kind to someone in the workforce. But we live in a world right now where there's so much cruelty and violence and conflict. it's almost revolutionary just to be nice. Be nice, you know, and be nice to people who don't expect you to be nice to them. Because it's easy to be nice to your boss. I mean, everyone's nice to their boss.

But be nice to the homeless person, you know, like homelessness is a very complicated issue. I'm in the middle of San Francisco. We've got a crisis on the streets. There's people on fentanyl sleeping in the building on the sidewalk right outside my building right now. And it's hard to be nice to those people. And I'm not saying they don't have some responsibility for their problem. But, you know, it's not a challenge to be nice to your boss. boss or the rich person who you're trying to raise funds from it's harder to be nice the person

who just pooped on your side right right it's harder to be nice to the chicken who is making your chicken nuggets and you know the main thing i'd ask everyone to do is just challenge yourself to be a kinder person because it really is pretty revolutionary in a world with so much cruelty to be kind we should all be striving to be a little kinder to the world around us right so who is jeremy um jeremy is one of our teamers he's the chief of staff of the simple art he's actually a former journalist himself he used to work for mvr and now he works through the animals because he saw a bigger and better purpose for his life which i'm very grateful for him for joining the team what jeremy needs to have a talk with you about raising money

because you're horrible about it like i've given you multiple opportunities and you're like but you don't even have to join you don't have to do that it's like you know you do you know you have to support you know every bit does help i will say that every bit does help when if you want to contribute we got legal fees we got you know um cost for animals we've rescued uh i got an animal we rescued in the room with me all of it um and you know i i no longer am a corporal lawyer and even if when i was a corporal lawyer given the scale we've now rescued harder than animals from abusive situations and each of those animals it's not just i mean obviously saving those lives huge and i mean i i wake up every day and i've got a miracle in front of me my dog

rescue from a bugging form. But the bigger picture is we have a chance to educate tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people about the abuses of these animals, dogs, cats, all sorts of animals are facing and change the system. So we are no longer being lied to. These laws are no longer being ignored and we can build the system. Let's kind to everybody. Okay.

I like it. We should leave it there. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. This is so much fun. No, I appreciate you talking to me for almost two hours. no it's look I I love what you're doing and I love your story is such an inspiring story of redemption I'm just so glad that people like you exist in the world and you're killing me let's just

I'm just trying to make a living I'm just trying to make a living yeah but I mean going coming from where you were to making a living that's that's a tremendous tremendous accomplishment because again I've seen it firsthand and I'm lucky I'm very privileged but a lot of people go through what you went doing it breaks them and it I was going to say it didn't break you I feel very lucky to that it's come together. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

That's awesome. A lot of luck. I'd rather be lucky than good. It takes, you've got to be good to take advantage of your luck. That's what they say, right? Yeah, yeah. So I think you were, you were good number. Better you are, the more lucky you get.

I've heard that way. Exactly. You know. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified videos just like this, assuming you like the interview.

Or maybe you're already subscribed. whatever uh leave me a comment and i'm we're going to leave the the link to simple heart dot org in the description you just click the link you go there gives you options on how to donate i really appreciate you guys watching also please consider joining my patreon and leave me a comment so i really do appreciate you guys uh be in here see you